The early adventures of Allan Quatermain, covering his childhood, early years in Africa and very short lived marriage to the woman who gave birth to his son. It's not a major epic like King Solomon's Mines or Allan Quatermain but it doesn't containing some exciting and moving moments. Fans will enjoy reading about where Quatermain came from (mother died young, dad and he moved to South Africa, Dad was a clergyman), even if it's more of a prologue.
The story only gets going when Quatermain's dad carks it and Allan heads off on a trek. He meets a wise old African who performs a series of magic tricks, which is dull, and there's some shooting of local fauna, which is even duller but things perk up when they come across some Boers on a trek. There's a Zulu attack, most of the Boers are wiped out except one baby, Quatermain and his friend head off and discover an isolated kraal run by a white man and his beautiful daughter, Stella, Stella and Allan fall in love (well, it's not as though they've got a lot of choice if they're going to turn their noses up at the locals), and have some happiness before her pre-ordained demise.
Some of this is silly - did Stella really have to be a long-lost childhood playmate of Quatermain's? - and the magic powers of the wise old wizard feels like plot cheating too many times (e.g. creating visions to find where Stella has been taken), but there are some good action sequences (attack on the Boers, the rescue of Stella), and a terrific villain in the human raised by baboons who is obsessed with Stella. I'm surprised Haggard introduced this Boer baby who Quatermain and Stella look after and didn't bring her back for subsequent adventures. The ending is quite moving (although the time line took a while to wrap my head around - from my calculations it took Stella eight months to die at the kraal). Enough colour and movement to make you wonder why it was never adapted.
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